gined. He would not
have the needful air of weight and gravity. But for all of us, painters,
poets, sculptors, musicians, who live outside of life, wholly occupied
in studying it, in reproducing it, holding ourselves always a little
remote from it, as one steps back from a picture the better to see it, I
say that marriage can only be the exception. To that nervous, exacting,
impressionable being, that child-man that we call an artist, a special
type of woman, almost impossible to find, is needful, and the safest
thing to do is not to look for her. Ah! how well our great Delacroix,
whom you admire so much, understood that! What a fine existence was his,
bounded by his studio wall, devoted exclusively to Art! I was looking
the other day at his cottage at Champrosay and the prim little garden
full of roses, where he sauntered alone for twenty years! It has the
calm and the narrowness of celibacy. Well now! think for a moment of
Delacroix married, father of a family, with all the preoccupations of
children to bring up, of money matters, of illnesses; do you believe his
work would have been the same?_

THE POET.

_You cite Delacroix, I reply Victor Hugo. Do you think that marriage
hampered him for instance, while writing so many admirable books?_

THE PAINTER.

_I think as a matter of fact, that marriage did not hamper him in
anything. But all husbands have not the genius that obtains pardon,
nor a halo of glory with which to dry the tears they cause to flow. It
cannot be very amusing to be the wife of a genius. There are plenty of
labourers' wives who are happier._

THE POET.

_A curious thing, all the same, this special pleading against marriage,
by a married man, who is happy in being so._

THE PAINTER.

_I repeat that I don't give myself as an example. My opinion is formed by
all the sad things I have seen elsewhere; all the misunderstandings
so frequent in the households of artists, and caused solely by their
abnormal life. Look at that sculptor who, in full maturity of age and
talent, has just exiled himself, leaving wife and children behind him.
Public opinion condemns him, and certainly I offer no excuse for him.
And, nevertheless, I can well understand how he arrived at such a point!
Here was a fellow who adored his art, and had a horror of the world, and
society. The wife, though amiable and intelligent, instead of shielding
him from the social obligations he loathed, condemned him for some
ten y